Thursday, October 9, 2008

Betting on Snow

Well here's a cultural difference: betting on the first day of snow.

I read in the Star Tribune (the local paper) that people are placing bets (though probably not literally) on the first day of snow. Here are the first day of snow dates for the last few years:

2004: October 17
2005: October 6
2006: October 11
2007: November 5

I had heard that the first day of snow in Minneapolis was December 1st last year - so perhaps the November date was for anywhere in Minnesota. I doubt that though, as northern Minnesota got their first frost in August! I don't think there has been snow anywhere in the state, but I think they are calling for that by early next week for up north.

It's hard to believe what with the lovely weather we've had lately. It has been cold in the mornings, but we've been in the upper 60s and low 70s for a couple days.

This snow thing is so different from Seattle where we take bets on how many days we'll go without seeing the sun - or if we'll break the record for number of days of rain in a row - or most amount of rain in 24 hours - something along those lines.

Any bet in Seattle around snow would be more along the lines of whether it would snow.

2 comments:

Jed Carosaari said...

And LA, where it's bets on the Richter Scale after an earthquake.

The earliest snow here was Oct 6th, in '64. They're predicting snow around Thanksgiving.

Jed Carosaari said...

Ha-ha! Stupid Seattle people who didn't leave the Northwest in time- they just got 4-6 inches just outside, along Steven's Pass. (No, I will *not* be regretting these words in two months time...)